Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Guardian asks "Why you can't find a library book in your search engine?"

The OCLC data-grab has hit the "real" media—an article in the Guardian. The article asks the simple question, "Why you can't find a library book in your search engine?"

It's an obvious question. The answer isn't quite as simple as they put it. Libraries would be in Google if their library catalogs could be spidered. But they'd still be hampered by OCLC in various ways. Anyway the coverage of OCLC, Open Library, LCSH.info and LibraryThing are spot-on. And the subtle nationalist angle—an American site!—can't hurt.*

Three cheers for the Guardian. Next up, the New York Times? We can hope.

5 Comments:

Many of the books I read are loaned from my local public library in the Sefton district of Merseyside (near Liverpool, England). I tag these as "library books" on LibraryThing and have now also started adding tags to identify the particular branch of the local library service each book came from (e.g. "Crosby library" for my nearest branch). I imagine I am not alone in doing this. Those of us who tag in this way are already building our own catologue of what is available from libraries. (Apologies to those who believe that LT should only be used to catalogue books that users actually I own!)